He taught at
Manchester University,
Durham University and Cambridge, as well as undertaking expeditions to
Tristan da Cunha, south-west
Chile and the
Antarctic. He was Chief Biologist to the
British Antarctic Survey, then research director of the
Nature Conservancy Council and, for eighteen years, Chief Scientist and head of research at the
Department of the Environment. Subsequently, he was Director General of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature. After his formal retirement, he was a member of the
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and served as co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, and Secretary of the
UN Secretary General's High-Level Board on Sustainable Development. ==Awards and honours==